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On the following night Valentine sat waiting for Julian's arrival in his drawing-room, which looked out upon Victoria Street, whereas the only window of the tentroom opened upon some waste ground where once a panorama of Jerusalem, or some notorious city, stood, and where building operations were now being generally carried on. Valentine very seldom used his drawing-room.
Everything in which he sought to find distraction, lacked savour. As he sat watching a ballet that glittered with electricity, and was one twinkle of coloured movement, he found himself longing for the silence, the gloom, the live expectation of the tentroom, night, and Julian. At White's the conversation of the men struck him as even more scrappy, more desultorily scandalous, than usual.
"Come up," Julian said, and he hurried back to the flat, the little boy violently emulating his giant stride up the stairs and arriving flushed and panting at the door. Julian, who was entirely abstracted in his agitation, made for the tentroom without another word to the boy, seized pen and paper and began to write, urgently requesting Dr. Levillier to come at once to see Valentine.
"Perhaps I have stolen a fragment of your nature, Julian, in those dark nights in the tentroom. Since you have been away I have wondered. An extraordinary sensation of bodily strength, of enormous vigour, has come to me. And I want to test the sensation, to see if it is founded upon fact." He was sitting in a low chair, and as he spoke he slowly stretched his limbs.
He led the way down the scented corridor, scented with the thin, gently bright scent of violets. "The tentroom has a history," he continued to Cuckoo, opening a door on the left. "It was once the scene of an an absurd experiment. Eh, doctor?" They entered the room. As they did so the hot, sticky scent of the hidden hyacinths poured out to meet them.
They kept silence and sat for what seemed a very long time. At last Julian said: "Val!" "Well?" "Let us go back into the tentroom." "Why?" "Nothing will ever happen here." "Why should anything happen there?" "I don't know. Let us go. The fire is burning too brightly here. We ought to have complete darkness." "Very well, though I can't believe it will make the slightest difference."
The tentroom, with its shadowy tulips, its scented warmth, its pale twilight, its quick silences when voices ceased, was a temple of wonder and a home of the miraculous. And those gathered in it, what were they? Men and a woman? Bodies? Earthly creatures? No. To his mind they were stripped bare of the clothes in which man governed by decrees of some hidden power must make his life pilgrimage.
On my arrival at Malmaison I was ushered into the tentroom leading to the library. How I was astonished at the good-natured familiarity with which he received me! This extraordinary man displayed, if I may employ the term, a coquetry towards me which surprised me, notwithstanding my past knowledge of his character.
Abruptly a childish voice intruded itself upon him. "Lor', sir," it said. "Is the gentleman ill?" Julian glanced up and found that the little boy had innocently followed him into the tentroom, and was now standing near him, gazing with a round-eyed concern upon the stretched figure on the divan. "Yes," Julian replied; "ill, very ill. I want you to go for a doctor."
"He is fainting unconscious?" "Unconscious, yes." They were in the little hall now. Doctor Levillier narrowly scrutinized Julian. For a moment he thought Julian had been drinking, and he took him by the arm. "No; it is fear," he murmured, releasing him, and walking into the tentroom. Julian followed with a loud footstep, treading firmly. Each step said to Death, "You are not here.
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